| Wellbeing debates Irish College of Psychiatrists Wellbeing Foundation spokesman Basil Miller went head to head with Consilia Walsh, chair of the Irish College of Psychiatrists, in the Irish Times on Monday 7 July. Miller focused on the human rights deficiencies in Irish mental health legislation and demanded that the government support the Private Members Bill introduced by senators De Burca, Boyle and Norris, saying that it would set in place the absolute minimum standards of protection for the psychologically distressed set out by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations. Walsh defended ECT as a treatment, cherry-picking the evidence to support her case. She did not once mention the human and civil rights of those detained, nor the continued flouting of medical ethics by psychiatrists in the health services who impose invasive and dangerous therapies on 'their' patients against the will of the latter. Read the article here, or download all articles, news reports, comments and letters recently published in the Irish Times here Senate hears condemnation of 'brutal' shock therapy  The campaign against ECT (Electro
Convulsive Therapy) received a big boost on 25 June 2008 when a Private
Members Bill was debated for two hours in Seanad Eireann.Proposed by Green Party senators Deirdre de Burca and Dan Boyle together with independent senator David Norris, the Bill deals with two provisions of the Mental Health Act 2001. One is section 58, which refers to psychosurgery, the surgical removal or modification of parts of the brain to achieve a psychological aim — lobotomy. The other is Section 59, dealing with ECT. The Bill would ban the use of ECT without the consent of the patient concerned. At present, electric shock treatment is widely used on involuntary patients in mental hospitals in Ireland. All the senators who spoke supported the notion of having a debate on these issues, though not all supported the specific amendment proposed on ECT. Those who did not support it outright nonetheless favoured a thorough investigation by the legislature of the issue, perhaps at hearings by the Joint Committee on Health and Children, and were sympathetic to the need to protect mental health service users from the arbitrary use of what they recognise as, to say the least, a "controversial" method of treatment. The debate was adjourned without a vote, so the Bill lives to be debated further following the investigations proposed by several senators and accepted by the proposers. Now, then, is the time to write to senators and TDs demanding that they support this Bill. You can download e-mail addresses for both Dail deputies and Senators here and here. A number of anti-ECT campaigners from around the country attended the debate, joined in a welcome act of solidarity by Professor Ivor Browne, retired Professor of Psychiatry at UCD and formerly Chief Psychiatrist of the Dublin and Eastern health region. The group included John McCarthy of Mad Pride Ireland, who contested the last general election as an independent candidate representing mental health service users, Drs Michael Corry and Aine Tubridy, and authors Mary and Jim Maddock of MindFreedom Ireland. The entire debate, well worth reading, is available on the Oireachtas Eireann website here. Download the Bill here More resources to help There is a list of a wide selection of books, articles, and websites with useful and helpful material on our sister website, depressiondialogues.ie, including Going Mad? and Depression: An Emotion, Not A Disease, by Michael Corry and Aine Tubridy, Beyond Prozac by Terry Lynch, and Medicines Out Of Control? by Charles Medawar and Anita Hardon, together with sites such as Dr Peter Breggin's website and many more. You'll find access here | The Final Solution: the
campaign to stop ECT Electro Convulsive
Therapy
(ECT) is the deliberate administration of electric shocks to the brain.
This is how it was described by the British Department of
Health
in 2007: “ECT is carried out under general anaesthetic, and a
strong muscle relaxant is administered to patients to prevent
the
violent muscle spasms that the treatment would otherwise
cause.
The patient is strapped on their back to a flat table which, in the
event of a patient vomiting, can be spun upside down. “In the presence of an anaesthetist and psychiatrist, electrodes are attached to the patient’s head and the electrical voltage is administered until the psychiatrist observes the patient’s toe twitch. This is a sign that the patient, despite the relaxant drugs, is convulsing. Up to 400 volts are used.” 
ECT being administered It is better described as a Holocaust of the brain: a brutal Final Solution which must be stopped. The time to abolish electric shock treatment is now. As a first step, we are carrying out research and collecting the testimony of those who have been subjected to this barbarity. Please join this work by participating in the survey (below) and by encouraging anyone you know who has received ECT to do the same. ECT survey: tell us about your experiences As part of the new campaign against ECT, the Institute of Psychosocial Medicine is carrying out research into the use of ECT in Ireland. You can help get this research programme off to a good start by participating in a short survey on how ECT is used, here on this website. The survey is open until 30 May 2008. To answer a short list of questions about your experience of ECT, whether yourself or the experience of a family member, visit the survey page here Download Michael Corry's The Final Solution The Wellbeing Foundation has published a new pamphlet, The Final Solution, by Dr Michael Corry. It is available free as an e-book. To get your copy to read on-screen or print out, just click here You will need Adobe Reader to open the document. If you don't already have it, download it here Corry talks to Pat Kenny Michael Corry spoke to Pat Kenny on Friday 9 May 2008, on his radio show on RTE1. You can listen to that segment of the show here, or find it in the entire show, here Irish Times article says 'barbaric age' must end You can read a hard-hitting piece by Dr Michael Corry which lays out all the medical arguments against the use of ECT in the Irish Times of 25 June 2008. For online IT readers, the piece is here. If you wish to read it or download it from our website, go here The Sunday Independent reports our ECT campaign here and here, with some letters from readers here |